Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
The Heartland Institute’s Anthony Watts, Sterling Burnett, Linnea Lueken, and Jim Lakely will tackle this subject, plus other Crazy Climate News of the Week. Join us LIVE at 1 p.m. ET on YouTube, Rumble, X, and Facebook. Participate in the show by leaving your comments and questions in the chat.
The election of Donald Trump in 2024 looked like it brought an end to the previous administration’s radical environmental policies.
America walked out on the global climate scammers, canceled green energy projects, and is still trying to claw back billions of dollars shoveled out the door to Democrat-linked groups in the waning days of the Biden administration.
But one of the worst environmental policies of all, like a zombie, is still wandering around Washington.
A spending bill that passed the Senate recently included a provision directing the Department of Energy to review the “carbon intensity” of American-made products and compare the CO2 emissions with similar products imported to the United States.
Such provisions are how carbon taxes, or even carbon tariffs, come to life.
What’s going on here?
And can this be stopped?
The Heartland Institute’s Anthony Watts, Sterling Burnett, Linnea Lueken, and Jim Lakely will tackle this subject, plus other Crazy Climate News of the Week. Join us LIVE at 1 p.m. ET on YouTube, Rumble, X, and Facebook. Participate in the show by leaving your comments and questions in the chat.
Francis Menton’s February 5, 2026, post specifically critiques the “How Science Works” chapter in the newly released Fourth Edition of the Federal Judicial Center’s Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, a document co-developed with NASEM input.
Professor Michael Weisberg ´s work focuses on philosophy of science, particularly models and idealization in scientific practice, philosophy of biology, and related areas like simulation and global climate issues. He has also taken on administrative roles and advisory positions on climate-related topics.
Francis Menton’s February 5, 2026, post specifically critiques the “How Science Works” chapter in the newly released Fourth Edition of the Federal Judicial Center’s Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, a document co-developed with NASEM input.
Professor Michael Weisberg ´s work focuses on philosophy of science, particularly models and idealization in scientific practice, philosophy of biology, and related areas like simulation and global climate issues. He has also taken on administrative roles and advisory positions on climate-related topics.
My last two posts have been about the new Federal Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, just out (December 31) from the Federal Justice Center. The Chair of that Center is U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts. The latest version of the Manual is the Fourth Edition. The prior version in 2011 was the Third Edition; and there were also two prior Editions from 2000 and 1994.
In those previous two posts, I principally criticized a newly- added chapter in the Fourth Edition titled “Reference Guide on Climate Science.” Today, I want to take a look at another chapter titled “How Science Works.” There was no such chapter in the First Edition, but a chapter by that title, written by a guy named David Goodstein (an Emeritus Professor at Caltech), was added in the Second Edition. In the Third Edition, Goodstein’s chapter was somewhat modified and slightly expanded (from 16 pages to 18). Goodstein died in 2024, and in the Fourth Edition he has been replaced by Michael Weisberg and Anastasia Thanukos, who have now produced a chapter with the same title, but now running to some 61 pages.
In my January 31 post, my comment on the Weisberg/Thanukos work product was that it was “not too terrible,” but that it was “way longer than it needs to be” and “the most important points are buried.” Further comparing this chapter to the chapter on (so-called) “climate science” (which is entirely hoakum) I continue the view that there are some good points here. However, there are also some serious flaws, and I don’t want to move on without pointing some of those out.
Let’s start with the identity of the lead author. Weisberg is said to be a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. One part of that gives great pause, and it’s not that Weisberg is a Professor of Philosophy rather than of some field of science. I think that the nature of the scientific method and of the development of scientific knowledge is actually a bona fide part of philosophy, namely logic. So, the part of Weisberg’s resume that gives me pause is instead that he works at the University of Pennsylvania. That is the institution that in 2022 hired the single biggest charlatan pseudoscientist in the entire country, namely Michael “Hockey Stick” Mann, and gave him a top University Professorship. Has Weisberg ever spoken out against Mann, or criticized him in any way? Not that I can find. So, for starters, here we have a guy who is willing to look past and excuse the worst of the worst in the way of politicized pseudoscience.
As I said in the previous post, there are many things here to which I can subscribe, and I should start with those. As the most important example, the section on “Key Traits of Science,” beginning at page 60, basically has it right. Subsections include: “Science Investigates the Natural World and Natural Explanations”; “Science Investigates Testable Hypotheses”; and “Science Responds to Evidence.” So far, so good.
But in the process of generating a way-too-long 60+ pages, Weisberg veers badly off track from time to time. There are too many examples to cover them all in a short blog post, but here are a several of the more important:
Is Science a method of inquiry or a body of accepted knowledge (or both)?
Weisberg gets this one completely wrong. From page 50:
Science is both a body of knowledge and the process for building that knowledge based on evidence acquired through observation, experiment, and simulation. The term is accurately applied to knowledge on a wide variety of topics and to diverse lines of inquiry.
I completely disagree. The idea that Science can be a body of knowledge is where we get pronouncements from a priestly class that “The Science” has established such and so, and therefore we mere laymen and peons are not allowed to question it. That is the opposite of the scientific method. So, science cannot be both the method that questions all allegedly accepted propositions, and also a body of accepted knowledge. Richard Feynmann’s definition of science is the one I subscribe to: “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”
Confused treatment of the concept of falsification.
At the beginning of a subsection titled “Science Does Not Prove Hypotheses,” Weisberg states “No matter how much evidence supports or refutes it, a hypothesis cannot be absolutely proven true or false.” I agree that a hypothesis cannot absolutely be proven true, but how about false?
After making that statement, Weisberg goes through a series of examples, all of which are instances of how a hypothesis can still turn out to be false even after much accumulation of corroborating evidence.
Yes. But he gives no examples of the opposite circumstance, where a hypothesis could turn out to be true after falsified by definitive evidence. In discussing the subject, he confuses the logic of advancing knowledge through a process of falsification with a very separate concept, which is the practical difficulty of accumulating unambiguous evidence.
Sloppy statements about “accepted science” and “consensus.”
In the midst of otherwise sensible sub-sections and paragraphs, sloppy sentences repeatedly appear about things deemed to be “accepted science” and “consensus.” For example, from page 64:
Despite its tentative nature, accepted scientific knowledge is reliable.
Well, Michael, which “accepted” scientific knowledge is “reliable”? All of it? And, “accepted” by whom? By your friends? By my friends?
By the orthodox climate clique? How can someone make such a statement after the “accepted science” Covid debacle of lock- downs and masking and “social distancing” that we have just been through, not to mention the endless and ongoing climate scam?
Weisberg continues:
Such [“accepted science”] explanations generate predictions that hold true in many different contexts and at many diff er ent scales, allowing us to figure out how entities in the natural world are likely to behave and how we can harness that understanding to solve problems and dispense justice.
Well, “accepted science” explanations do generate useful predictions in some circumstances, and in other circumstances they prove to be completely wrong. The only thing significant about real science (the method) is providing a method to distinguish between those two categories. Weisberg does not do that.
Correlation and causation
From page 92:
While the often-stated maxim that correlation does not imply causation is true, in fact, correlation is the only means that we have of establishing causation in science.
That’s just completely wrong. We absolutely have a way of “establishing causation” — or at least of progressively ruling out causes other than our hypothesized cause — which is by disproof of the null hypothesis. In the most common example with which almost everyone is familiar, pharmaceutical companies seeking approval of a drug are required to (at least tentatively) prove its efficacy by disproving the null hypothesis that a placebo is as good or better.
Weisberg follows the statement I quote above with a long example about how the causal relationship between smoking and lung cancer was established through a long series of studies proving correlation. Yes, in part. But those studies also disproved the null hypothesis that people or animals not exposed to inhaled tobacco smoke got lung cancer at the same rate.
Conclusion
So, the operating hypothesis is that Professor Weisberg wrote this chapter in complete good faith to give the courts a neutral guide to science, and the flaws I have identified are just a few innocent mis-steps attributable to short deadlines or sloppiness. But then there’s the null hypothesis that what I say are flaws were actually very intentionally inserted to give support to the litigation efforts of the most politicized consensus “science” scams going on these days, starting with the climate alarm scam. I kind of think that we are close to having to reject the original operating hypothesis in favor of the null hypothesis.
One of the most annoying things about climate doomsayers is the certainty with which they make their dire predictions, while simultaneously making excuses for all their past prognostications that failed to materialize. Let’s revisit a few.
This article was orginally published at The Empowerment Alliance and is re-published here with permission.
One of the most annoying things about climate doomsayers is the certainty with which they make their dire predictions, while simultaneously making excuses for all their past prognostications that failed to materialize. Let’s revisit a few.
In the early to mid-1970s, several magazine articles and a number of scientists predicted that cooling trends could usher in a new “mini-ice age” beginning within a few short years. Didn’t happen. In fact, new crystal balls went from cold to hot.
A June 1989 Associated Press story quoted “a senior U.N. environmental official” who claimed that “entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.”
Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, insisted that “governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control.” Without action “ocean levels will rise by up to three feet, enough to cover the Maldives and other flat island nations.”
At last report, the Maldives continue to thrive – thanks largely to growing tourism! According to CBS News, in 2009 former Vice President Al Gore (always good for a chuckle) “told a U.N. climate conference that new data suggests the Arctic polar ice cap may disappear in the summertime as soon as five to seven years from now,” meaning 2016 at the latest. Didn’t happen.
In 2000, the UK Independent ran an article quoting a scientist who suggested that within a decade, thanks to global warming, British children “won’t know what snow is.” Don’t tell that to the British youngsters and others who experienced the severe winters of 2010, 2013, 2018, etc.
Enough? Let’s do a couple more.
There were numerous predictions in the early 2000s that all glaciers in Glacier National Park would disappear by 2020 or, if we were lucky, by 2030.
“Later predictions delayed the glaciers’ inevitable demise to 2050,” according to a December 2025 article in the Daily Inter Lake. “Now, researchers say there is reason to believe some of the park’s perennial ice formations will persist into the 2100s.” Glaciers are famously stubborn. Several news stories over the years have quoted scientists and climate alarmists predicting that New York City would disappear under water thanks to flooding due to climate change.
For instance, in 2011, on the heels of Hurricane Irene, The Guardian produced the headline, “Major storms could submerge New York City in next decade,” and a subhead, “Sea-level rise due to climate change could cripple the city in Irene-like storm scenarios, new climate report claims.”
Instead, the only tsunami facing New York City is the flood of debt coming under socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Despite a track record that should discourage even the most ardent true believer, the predictions keep flying, fast and furious, most centered these days around slightly rising temperatures that will allegedly increase rainfall, create more wicked storms, and lead to drought, flood (they always cover both possibilities) or other catastrophes.
“Climate change is real, it’s happening and unless we do something about it soon, the consequences will be severe,” according to Martin Krause, director of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Climate Change Division. Second verse, same as the first.
While most believers in manmade climate change are part of the “Let’s Come Up With the Worst Case Scenario and Hope it Scares Everyone Into Action” school of alarmism, it’s refreshing to occasionally come across someone with a more reasonable approach.
Fitting that bill might be Noah Kaufman, former senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisers during the Biden administration, currently a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy and a co-director of the Resilient Energy Economies Initiative.
In a “let’s all calm down a minute” article appearing earlier this month in The Atlantic, Kaufman – while making it clear that he personally is firmly aboard the manmade climate change bandwagon – laments the specific time-and-date panic predictions that have helped lose respect and credibility for his cause.
“Few economists embrace these all-or-nothing views on climate policy,” Kaufman writes. Kaufman points out that “quantitative estimates of aggregated global damages over centuries lie far beyond our analytical capabilities. Small changes in assumptions … can yield results that appear tojustify virtually any policy response.”
At the end of the day, “these models can display a pessimistic worldview in which climate damages accelerate to catastrophic levels, or a more optimistic one in which human progress keeps damages relatively modest. They offer little help in determining which of these futures is coming.”
Kaufman concludes by acknowledging that “the full effects of climate change are unknowable, and a more constructive public discussion about climate policy will require getting more comfortable with that.”
I recommend Kaufman’s article. Even though I will likely remain among those who agree that the climate routinely changes but remain skeptical about the extent of mankind’s impact, I don’t mind discussing it and listening to different viewpoints. Such conversation is much more palatable with someone who is not exhibiting a holier-than-thou attitude or demeaning the intelligence of anyone who disagrees.
More manmade climate change believers who take a respectful, calmer and non-accusatoryapproach to the naysayers could go a long way in lowering the temperature – and don’t we all agree on that objective?
Gary Abernathy is a longtime newspaper editor, reporter and columnist. He was a contributing columnist for the Washington Post from 2017-2023 and a frequent guest analyst across numerous media platforms. He is a contributing columnist for The Empowerment Alliance, which advocates for realistic approaches to energy consumption and environmental conservation.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
In announcing plans to have Virginia reinstitute a carbon tax, Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger makes no mention of global warming – the bogeyman usually called upon by supporters of such levies. That may be because the apocalyptic narrative that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) threaten to overheat the planet has become widely seen as bogus – perhaps not fitting for a newly elected chief executive.
In announcing plans to have Virginia reinstitute a carbon tax, Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger makes no mention of global warming – the bogeyman usually called upon by supporters of such levies.
That may be because the apocalyptic narrative that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) threaten to overheat the planet has become widely seen as bogus – perhaps not fitting for a newly elected chief executive.
So, what about the carbon tax? It is imposed on fossil fuels through membership in a consortium of states in New England and the Mid-Atlantic – the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). The objective is to reduce the use of fuels like natural gas and coal and the CO2 emissions from burning them, thereby avoiding purportedly dangerous atmospheric warming.
Announcing Virginia’s first entry into RGGI in 2020, Democrat Governor Ralph Northam said the commonwealth “is sending a powerful signal that (it) is committed to fighting climate change.”
Then in 2023, a more clear-eyed Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin withdrew from RGGI, an action the freshly inaugurated Governor Spanberger, a Democrat, pledged to reverse.
As Virginia policymakers considered the Youngkin proposal to leave RGGI, the Fairfax, Virgina-based CO2 Coalition issued its 2022 report, “Virginia and Climate Change: Separating Fact from Fiction.” It concluded that environmental justifications for RGGI membership were, well, fiction.
Written by seven scientists, most of them widely published, the report reviewed data concerning severe weather, temperature, CO2 levels, heat waves, sea level and the health of Virginia agriculture. Despite decades of industrial activity, the commonwealth was found to be doing well.
For example, like in most of the U.S., Virginia agriculture has had regular increases in crop yields, benefiting from technological advancements, modest warming and higher levels of atmospheric CO2 that boost plant fertilization. Neither was there cause for alarm regarding rising seas, which have exhibited no increase in the rate of natural rise, nor with regard to severe weather, whose worldwide trends have been in a 20-year decline.
Importantly, Virginia’s RGGI participation would make no meaningful difference in the weather.
Using the methodology of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the amount of warming averted by eliminating all the commonwealth’s CO2 emissions was calculated to be 0.0038 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100 — an amount too small to be felt or measured.
Since Virginia’s withdrawal from RGGI, alarmists’ predictions of “existential” coastal flooding, mega-storms and general mayhem have regularly failed to materialize – just as they have for the last 35 years. Moreover, numerous studies – in addition to the CO2 Coalition report – have refuted the pseudoscience of doomsayers and the negative consequences of climate programs like RGGI have become more apparent.
Extreme cases like Germany’s self-inflicted high energy prices and deindustrialization present real cause for alarm.
Increasingly, governments, businesses and voters are questioning those promoting hysteria over the natural changes of a complex – and uncontrollable – climate.
Little wonder that Governor Spanberger offered fiscal arguments for rejoining RGGI rather repeat the tired trope of climate change. Before Youngkin’s 2023 withdrawal, “RGGI generated hundreds of millions of dollars for Virginia,” said Spanberger.
But RGGI can hardly be the best way to raise money, if there is no environmental benefit – and there is none. Forcing the closure of economic power sources like coal and natural gas-fired plants in favor “green” solar and wind facilities – a RGGI objective – is a financial loser for consumers. The electricity rates of RGGI states are higher than the national average and many are close to the highest in the nation.
After six years of debate over whether to join RGGI, Pennsylvania Republican legislators got the Democrat governor last fall to drop the proposal as part of budget negotiations. The state’s participation in RGGI had been projected to increase Pennsylvania electricity rates by 30%. Leaders of labor unions frequently testified that the threat of RGGI had discouraged billions of dollars of energy investments in the Keystone State.
A CO2 Coalition examination of the Pennsylvania proposal had described it as “a solution in search of a problem.” Ditto for Old Dominion.
Virginia policymakers should reject RGGI as a bad idea. The commonwealth has no climate crisis and no other good reason to join the consortium.
A Daily Mail article from late January 2026 tells Lucy Biggers, a woman in her mid-30s who describes spending about a decade (roughly half her 20s and beyond) deeply involved in climate activism. She supported figures like AOC and Greta Thunberg, participated in protests, and fully bought into catastrophic man-made climate change narratives. She now calls her past self “brainwashed” by what she views as flawed or exaggerated ideology, and she’s become a vocal “climate realist”.
A Daily Mail article from late January 2026 talks about Lucy Biggers, a woman in her mid-30s who describes spending about a decade (roughly half her 20s and beyond) deeply involved in climate activism.
She supported figures like AOC and Greta Thunberg, participated in protests, and fully bought into catastrophic man-made climate change narratives.
She now calls her past self “brainwashed” by what she views as flawed or exaggerated ideology, and she’s become a vocal “climate realist”.
Her shift in perspective- what she calls an “awakening”- happened after two key life-changing experiences:
Observations during the COVID-19 pandemic: She noted that even with global lockdowns, economic shutdowns, and drastically reduced human activity for over a year, atmospheric CO₂ levels and climate emissions didn’t drop as dramatically as one might expect if human emissions were the dominant driver of warming. This led her to question the narrative that cutting emissions through drastic lifestyle or policy changes would have the proclaimed catastrophic-avoiding effects.
Becoming a parent: Having her first child prompted a reevaluation of priorities, fear-based messaging around doomsday climate scenarios, and a desire for a more balanced, evidence-based view rather than alarmism.
A former activist who says she was ‘brainwashed’ by climate change ideology has come out to warn others against what she calls a science which simply isn’t true.Daily Mail Online has the story.
Social media manager Lucy Biggers revealed that, in her 20s, she was one of the loudest voices sounding the alarm on global warming and efforts to police the world’s carbon footprint.
‘I interviewed Greta Thunberg, I have interviewed AOC [Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], I pushed ideas like the Green New Deal, plastic straw bans, plastic bag bans – anything you could think that is like the typical climate activist, I pushed those things,’ she said.
Now in her mid-30s, however, she released a scathing takedown of her former life, claiming her eyes were opened by what she witnessed during the Covid-19 pandemic and becoming a parent, adding that scientists who challenged the belief that man-made carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions were destroying the planet supplied the proof she needed.
‘I think this idea that warming is bad for humans can’t hold up to any scrutiny if you look at it honestly,’ Biggers said in a video viewed on X more than 500,000 times.
Biggers claimed Earth has actually been in a prolonged period of natural warming for centuries, ever since the end of the so-called Little Ice Age in the 1600s, and that former President Thomas Jefferson even documented a warmer climate in the 1700s.
Climate change is the term used to describe Earth’s warming, mainly as a result of human activity, such as burning coal, oil, and gas.
Scientists and climate activists have warned that this extra warmth could cause more extreme storms, rising seas that flood cities, and hotter summers that make it harder to grow food worldwide – all within the next 25 years.
However, Biggers produced examples of conflicting climate data over the years she claimed was evidence that casts serious doubt on the narrative than modern human activities were having a major impact on the environment.
‘Climate change isn’t dangerous, and there isn’t a consensus on how much of it we can even control, and if the solutions like solar and wind even work,’ Biggers argued in her social media post.
Biggers said she started questioning her climate activism during the Covid-19 pandemic and after having her first child, noting that even with the world effectively shutting down for over a year, it did little to reduce climate emissions.
She mentioned also realizing that things like oil pipelines might be safer for the environment than trains, and plastic bans could actually increase carbon footprints compared to using allegedly eco-friendly alternatives.
‘I did not want to be on my deathbed one day having regrets of sitting on what was the truth because of fear,’ the former activist explained.
After these doubts, Biggers revealed she read books that showed climate science is more complicated and less alarming than what she had been promoting a decade ago, which helped her shift to becoming a ‘climate realist.’
The first book, Apocalypse Never by Michael Shellenberger, a former environmental activist, argued against doomsday predictions and highlighted how environmental progress had already improved the world.
The second book, Unsettled by Steve Koonin, a physicist who worked under President Obama, explained the uncertainties in current climate models and data, challenging the idea of a simple, catastrophic crisis in Earth’s future.
She added that higher CO₂ levels have also been turned into a scapegoat by climate change alarmists, who blame them for global warming, melting glaciers, and rising sea levels worldwide.
‘And the increase in CO₂, we’ve seen global greening go up 15 to 20 percent in some areas. Plants have better growing seasons because CO₂ is a plant food, if you remember from biology class,’ Biggers explained.
‘And so, this idea that CO₂ was inherently bad, I also call b******* on.’
I spent half of my 20s as a brainwashed climate activist. This is the story of how I changed my mind and became a climate realist. pic.twitter.com/E54Fh9oEjb
The facts I learned that made me stop fearing climate change.
1. Deaths from natural disasters are down 95%. 2. 10x more people die from cold than from heat. 3. Global greening has increased. 4. Growers add up to 1,500 ppm of CO2 to their greenhouses. 5. Extreme weather has… pic.twitter.com/nj7NugPTA6
As discussed in the previous post, the Federal Judicial Center’s recently- updated Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence contains a new chapter on Climate Science. That chapter focuses on the promoting the hocus pocus of “attribution” studies that seek to blame every latest hurricane or flood or drought on human emissions of CO2, and thus on fossil fuel producers in particular.
As discussed in the previous post, the Federal Judicial Center’s recently- updated Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence contains a new chapter on Climate Science. That chapter focuses on the promoting the hocus pocus of “attribution” studies that seek to blame every latest hurricane or flood or drought on human emissions of CO2, and thus on fossil fuel producers in particular.
In my post, I characterized the authors’ write-up of the methodology of these attribution studies as relying on “logical fallacy,” and as “double-talk and bafflegab.” But I think that I inadequately articulated the nature of the fallacy. So, I will try to correct that here.
The heart of the problem is that science is all about hypotheses being subject to empirical test against real world evidence. But the “attribution” studies and their methodology seek to evade that necessary step. Instead, these studies claim to validate their attributions by reference to things like “physical understanding” and models that have not been empirically validated. In other words, rather than using empirical evidence to validate a hypothesis, they use one hypothesis supposedly to validate another hypothesis. They have assumed the conclusion they want to reach. This process is sometimes called circular reasoning.
To be fair, when buried in the midst of enough confusing verbiage, circular reasoning can often be difficult to detect. That is not an excuse for the fancily- credentialed pooh-bahs who have signed off on this Manual. If you aren’t up to the job of detecting circular reasoning, you are not qualified to contribute to a Manual like this one.
Here is the central portion of the key language in the new Manual chapter, as quoted from my previous post, with important words highlighted:
[A]ttribution involves sifting through a range of possible causative factors to determine the role of one or more drivers with respect to the detected change. This is typically accomplished by using physical understanding, as well as climate models and/or statistical analysis, to compare how the variable responds when certain drivers are changed or eliminated entirely.
So, to make an “attribution,” we compare the event that just happened against our “physical understanding” and against our “climate models.” Both of those things are our assumptions or hypotheses, not our proof. (The category of “statistical analysis” cannot be evaluated without more information. “Statistical analysis” of what? If it’s statistical analysis of our current hypothesis against our previous assumptions, then it’s another example of circular reasoning.) Thus, we have compared our new hypothesis to our pre-existing hypotheses, and they match! Therefore, we claim that the new hypothesis must be correct!
The missing piece is some kind of empirical study that establishes a definitive relationship between rising global temperatures and the type of event that you are seeking to blame on CO2 emissions. Remarkably, that does not exist for any form of extreme weather event, whether it be hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, floods, or anything else. A good compilation of studies failing to show any relationship between global temperatures and extreme weather events can be found in Steven Koonin’s book Unsettled. Anyway, you know that there is no such demonstrated empirical connection, because if there were the “attribution” advocates would cite those studies instead of trying to prove attribution with their own a priori assumptions.
The article uses a recent Nature study on malaria in Africa as a case study to argue that climate impact research often transforms highly uncertain, scenario-based modeling into seemingly precise, alarmist predictions through selective emphasis and framing.
The article uses a recent Nature study on malaria in Africa as a case study to argue that climate impact research often transforms highly uncertain, scenario-based modeling into seemingly precise, alarmist predictions through selective emphasis and framing.
Charles Rotter critiques a 2025 or early 2026 Nature paper titled something like “Projected impacts of climate change on malaria in Africa.”
He argues that climate-impact studies often perform a kind of “rhetorical alchemy”.
Such papers reveal more about the state of climate-impact modeling than about actual future malaria burdens.
It’s presented as an example of how uncertainty gets rhetorically transformed into urgency to support policy narratives.
Climate science communication often converts speculative chains into seemingly precise catastrophe forecasts, inflating perceived certainty and risks.
A recent Nature paper, “Projected impacts of climate change on malaria in Africa,” provides a textbook example of how layered model uncertainty can be transformed—through careful framing—into quantified predictions that appear far more authoritative than the underlying evidence warrants.
The headline figures are stark: 123 million additional malaria cases and more than 500,000 additional deaths by mid-century, attributed to climate change.
These numbers are already circulating as if they describe a measurable future risk. A close reading of the paper itself tells a very different story.
Abstract
The implications of climate change for malaria eradication this century remain poorly resolved1,2.
Many studies focus on parasite and vector ecology in isolation, neglecting the interactions between climate, malaria control and the socioeconomic environment, including disruption from extreme weather3,4.
Here we integrate 25 years of African data on climate, malaria burden and control, socioeconomic factors, and extreme weather.
Using a geotemporal model linked to an ensemble of climate projections under the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway 2-4.5 (SSP 2-4.5) scenario5, we estimate the future impact of climate change on malaria burden in Africa, including both ecological and disruptive effects.
Our findings indicate that climate change could lead to 123 million (projection range 49.5 million to 203 million) additional malaria cases and 532,000 (195,000–912,000) additional deaths in Africa between 2024 and 2050 under current control levels.
Contrary to the prevailing focus on ecological mechanisms, extreme weather events emerge as the primary driver of increased risk, accounting for 79% (50–94%) of additional cases and 93% (70–100%) of additional deaths.
Most increases stem from intensification in existing endemic areas rather than range expansion, with significant regional variation in impact.
These results highlight the urgent need for climate-resilient malaria control strategies and robust emergency response systems to safeguard progress towards malaria eradication.
This is not a study that reports new empirical discoveries about malaria transmission. It is an exercise in scenario construction. Its results emerge from a long chain of assumptions, models, and parameter choices, each, possibly, defensible in isolation, but collectively producing an impression of precision that the authors’ own caveats do not support.
The paper opens by positioning itself as a corrective to earlier work, arguing that prior studies focused too narrowly on ecological mechanisms while neglecting social and infrastructural disruption. That framing sets the stage for what follows: a shift away from biology and toward modeled institutional fragility.
“Nearly all existing projections share a central limitation: although they explore climate effects in isolation, they do not adequately account for non-climate determinants of malaria trends.”
This sounds reasonable, but what replaces that “limitation” is not observation. It is an expanded modeling framework that incorporates still more uncertain components.
The foundation of the analysis is future climate. The authors rely on downscaled CMIP6 global climate model outputs under the SSP 2-4.5 scenario, described as a “middle of the road” pathway. These models are known to diverge substantially in regional precipitation and extreme weather projections across Africa. The paper attempts to address this by using ensembles, but ensembling disagreement does not eliminate uncertainty—it simply averages it.
“Between-GCM uncertainty and variability were accounted for using an ensemble of CMIP6 members…”
That sentence does a great deal of rhetorical work. “Accounted for” sounds reassuring, but an ensemble mean is not a validation. It is a compromise among conflicting model structures, all of which share common assumptions and biases.
Those climate projections are then downscaled to a 5×5 km grid and fed into mechanistic models that translate temperature, rainfall, and humidity into mosquito and parasite suitability indices. These models are highly nonlinear and sensitive to thresholds.
Small errors in climate inputs propagate into large swings in transmission suitability. This is a property of the models—but it is rarely emphasized when results are summarized.
The suitability indices are then used as predictors in a stacked statistical framework combining linear models, generalized additive models, boosted regression trees, and a Bayesian geostatistical smoother. The machinery is complicated, but it is also opaque. Even the authors acknowledge that the uncertainty behavior of such systems is poorly understood.
“There is currently limited precedent for fully characterizing uncertainty in stacked models, particularly when applied to spatially correlated data.”
That admission should fundamentally constrain how the outputs are interpreted. Instead, it is buried in the Discussion, far removed from the headline numbers.
Up to this point, the results are relatively modest. When ecological effects alone are considered, the authors find that climate-driven changes in malaria transmission are small and mixed—some regions increase, others decrease, and the continent-wide average effect is close to zero.
“We project that, considered in isolation, the ecologically driven impacts of climate change on malaria transmission would lead to minimal overall change in Africa by 2050…”
This result is rarely highlighted, because it does not support the sense of urgency implied by the paper’s title.
The dramatic figures emerge only when the authors introduce a second layer: disruption from extreme weather events. Floods and cyclones are modeled to damage housing, disrupt vector control, and reduce access to treatment. According to the paper, these disruptive effects dominate the outcome.
“Extreme weather events emerge as the primary driver of increased risk, accounting for 79%… of additional cases and 93%… of additional deaths.”
This is the pivotal move. The paper is no longer primarily about climate and malaria ecology. It is about assumed disruption to institutions and infrastructure, projected decades into the future.
Here the evidentiary basis becomes especially thin. The magnitude and duration of disruption are not derived from large datasets or controlled studies. They are assembled from a literature review of heterogeneous case studies and 34 expert interviews, then translated into parameters describing how much housing is damaged, how many clinics close, and how long recovery takes.
“The paucity of data necessitated a more heuristic approach to quantifying likely impacts.”
“Heuristic” is doing a lot of work here. These parameters are not measured. They are judged to be plausible. Because the data are sparse, the authors apply uncertainty ranges spanning 50% to 150% of their central values.
“A broad uncertainty range was considered appropriate because the scarcity of observational data precluded a more formal quantification…”
These heuristic disruption parameters are then applied continent-wide, month by month, under simulated future floods and cyclones generated by climate-driven storm models. At this point, the model is several layers removed from anything that could reasonably be called an observation.
Yet the final outputs are presented as cumulative totals of cases and deaths, with specific numbers and ranges.
a, Projected continent-wide cumulative impact on cases by year, with decomposition showing distinct contributions of the different ecological and disruptive drivers of climate change impact. Grey bars denote projection range, where this is calculated as the 10th and 90th percentile of the model ensemble across all GCMs and disruption parameter ranges. b, Mapped cumulative impact on cases with colour scale reflecting degree of GCM ensemble consensus. Large water bodies, national parks with extremely low or zero population, and out-of-scope countries are masked in dark grey. All cumulative impacts are relative to 2022 case counts, aligned to national totals reported in the 2023 World Malaria Report50. Administrative boundaries were obtained fro m the Malaria Atlas Project (https://data.malariaatlas.org)41, under a CC BY 3.0 licence.
“Our findings indicate that climate change could lead to 123 million additional malaria cases and 532,000 additional deaths in Africa between 2024 and 2050…”
What is rarely emphasized is that these figures depend critically on assumptions that freeze nearly all non-climatic progress. Malaria control coverage, housing quality, healthcare infrastructure, and socioeconomic development are held constant at present-day levels—except when they are damaged by climate events.
“We deliberately hold constant present-day levels of transport and healthcare infrastructure, housing quality and malaria control…”
This is not a neutral assumption. Historically, malaria burden has declined primarily because of improvements in drugs, vector control, infrastructure, and economic development. By suppressing those trends while allowing disruption to accumulate, the model structurally biases results toward worsening outcomes.
The authors also acknowledge that their projections are not forecasts.
“Our projections allow exploration of climate change effects but are not intended as forecasts of future conditions.”
They go further, stating explicitly that the uncertainty ranges are not statistical.
“The projection ranges are not… formal statistical intervals, providing indicative measures of uncertainty rather than probabilistic statements.”
These are not minor footnotes. They directly contradict the way the results are likely to be interpreted by policymakers, journalists, and advocacy groups.
This is where the rhetorical sleight of hand becomes apparent.
Deep in the paper, uncertainty is emphasized, limitations are acknowledged, and projections are framed as exploratory. In the abstract, figures, and conclusions, those same exploratory outputs are converted into quantified impacts with an unmistakable air of urgency.
The issue is structural. When multi-layered scenario models produce precise numbers, those numbers take on a life of their own. Caveats fade. Assumptions harden into facts. What began as “what if” quietly becomes “this will.”
The paper does not demonstrate that climate change will cause hundreds of millions of additional malaria cases. It demonstrates how easily such numbers can be produced when uncertain climate projections, sensitive ecological models, heuristic disruption parameters, frozen socioeconomic baselines, and long- time horizons are combined in a single framework.
The appropriate way to read this study is not as a prediction, but as a thought experiment—one that is highly sensitive to its assumptions and explicit about its limitations, if one reads far enough. The problem is not what the authors say in the fine print. It is how far that fine print is removed from the numbers that will be remembered.
In the end, this paper tells us less about the future of malaria than about the current state of climate-related modeling. It shows how uncertainty can be multiplied, smoothed, and translated into apparent precision. It shows how scenarios can be mistaken for forecasts. And it shows how, once numbers are published in a journal like Nature, they are treated as evidence—even when the authors themselves say they are not.
That is the sleight of hand worth paying attention to.
The DESNZ forecast (from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, under Ed Miliband’s department) of plunging wholesale gas prices over the coming years- around a 15% drop from 2024 levels by the end of the decade, continuing downward through to 2035 in the central scenario, and potentially halving in the most optimistic case- has significant but mixed implications for UK household energy bills.
Energy forecasts are volatile- past ones have missed geopolitical shocks, demand shifts, or supply changes.
The DESNZ forecast (from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, under Ed Miliband’s department) of plunging wholesale gas prices over the coming years- around a 15% drop from 2024 levels by the end of the decade, continuing downward through to 2035 in the central scenario, and potentially halving in the most optimistic case- has significant but mixed implications for UK household energy bills.
Energy forecasts are volatile- past ones have missed geopolitical shocks, demand shifts, or supply changes.
Ed Miliband’s civil servants have predicted a decade or more of falling gas prices, undermining Labour’s key argument for ditching fossil fuels.
A global glut of gas is set to bring prices down for years to come, according to a report from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (Desnz).
The paper, titled “Fossil Fuel Price Assumptions”, estimates prices to 2035. Its findings suggest that a shift to renewables could be more expensive than sticking with gas. Moving to sources such as wind and solar threatens to lock in the UK’s already-high energy prices for years to come.
The findings are embarrassing for Mr Miliband, who has insisted that switching to renewables is vital for bringing down bills and for energy security.
Mr Miliband told a recent conference that the surge in energy prices seen after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine showed that the “UK’s dependence on fossil fuels leaves us deeply vulnerable as a country”.
He added: “As long as we are dependent on fossil fuels, no matter where they come from, we will be stuck on the roller-coaster of volatile international markets … in the grip of dictators and petrostates.”
The UK gets most of its gas imports from Norway and America.
The Desnz report predicted that gas prices will fall by around 15pc between 2024 and the end of the decade. Officials expect prices to continue to fall up to 2035 under what it sees as the most likely scenario.
Mr Miliband’s staff based their assumptions on a huge, predicted increase in production of liquefied natural gas (LNG).
In fact, DESNZ were forecasting similar falls a year ago. It does not need a degree in rocket science to work out why.
It is all a simple matter of supply and demand. Prices spiked when the Ukraine war disrupted supplies. As a result, the high prices incentivised new supply – in particular by investing in LNG terminals.
As supply increases, prices return to normal – in other words, back to pre 2020 levels in real terms.
Miliband must have known about this for a long time, so the damage he is doing to the economy and the country is deliberate.
Below are the DESNZ projections, all at 2024 prices. Column B is the central case:
A recent article at Mother Jones, “Something Unexpected Is Happening With Norway’s Polar Bears,” expresses surprise that polar bear populations in Norway are actually getting healthier amid declining sea ice. This is true, though it is not truly “news,” in the sense of something newly discovered, and should not have been unexpected. Previous research, including annual polar bear counts, show that polar bear populations as a whole have increased amid modest global warming.
A recent article at Mother Jones, “Something Unexpected Is Happening With Norway’s Polar Bears,” expresses surprise that polar bear populations in Norway are actually getting healthier amid declining sea ice. This is true, though it is not truly “news,” in the sense of something newly discovered, and should not have been unexpected. Previous research, including annual polar bear counts, show that polar bear populations as a whole have increased amid modest global warming.
Mother Jones says the message that polar bears would soon die out due to climate change “infiltrated the public psyche, perhaps more than any other about the scourge of global warming.” This is certainly true, polar bears became the poster children in many advertisements about climate change and were featured prominently in former Vice-President Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth.”
The polar bear extinction theory, however, is another one of the claims from that film that have long since been debunked, as Mother Jones admits, “the reality for these iconic bears is more complicated.”
Mother Jones references two studies showing that polar bears in multiple locations are doing very well. A 2022 study looking at southeastern Greenland and a recent study in Scientific Reports looking at Norway’s polar bear populations, show bears in those locations have actually become healthier, with their population “stable or growing.”
They do emphasize that Hudson Bay bears are struggling, claiming that “researchers have tied melting ice to lower bear survival and a shortage of food, finding that the population has roughly halved since the 1980s.” But overall, “there are 20 distinct polar bear populations around the world, and they all behave slightly differently. Warming is not uniformly killing them.”
In 2021, polar bear scientist Susan Crockford published a State of the Polar Bear report, summarizing the findings of previous polar bear counts and research. Her survey of the literature found that of 19 polar bear subpopulations, three are “increasing” or “likely increasing,” four are “stable” or “likely stable,” and 11 are “presumed stable or increasing.”
Previous reports going back to 2017 came to similar conclusions that most polar bear regional subpopulations were stable if not increasing, and there is no doubt that the total number of polar bears has increased since the 1960s. The same studies also suggested the polar bears were healthy and producing multiple cubs that survive to adulthood.
Concerning the Hudson Bay bear population, there is significant doubt about whether or not bear counts that claim lower numbers are being accurately portrayed by activist scientists and the media. The change in the number of polar bears there since the early 2000s is not statistically significant, and many of the catastrophic projections about Hudson Bay bears are based not on actual counts but on computer model projections of bear mortality. Recent counts do not consider the fact that bears migrate between regions. It is also notable that the West Hudson Bay and Southern Beaufort bear populations are the only places where potentially negative trends associated with ice loss have been found. Despite the same sea ice trends, other bear populations are doing very well. This should suggest that if those populations are in decline, there is more at play than ice trends.
The new Scientific Reports study is especially interesting, as it found that bears where sea ice is thicker actually have worse body condition than those where it is warmer, which should cast even more doubts on any theory where sea ice extent or thickness is directly associated with polar bear health. In her studies, Crockford also noted thick ice could hinder Polar bear flourishing rather than benefitting them.
Mother Jones is one of the premier climate alarmist websites, so it is refreshing, even somewhat surprising, to see it publish any good news at all, even if the good news is framed as surprising with readers directed towards additional alarmist projections with little connection to reality. Any species’ relationship with its environment is going to be complex and dependent on a variety of factors, especially when it comes to intelligent animals like polar bears. They can easily migrate and adapt to changing conditions, substituting other food stocks for seals. The truth is that they are doing much better now than they were decades ago and Mother Jones serves their readers well by reporting this fact.
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